Obama's broken promise burns the insured

OUR VIEW

The troubled rollout of health-plan enrollment under the Affordable Care Act hit home in Tennessee this week as it was learned that about 66,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee customers will not, in fact, be able to keep their current health insurance, as President Obama had promised.

While some may complain about the insurer, make no mistake: This one is on the president.

Blue Cross in Tennessee joins other health insurance companies around the country in having to deliver bad news that is not of their making. Although 40,000 of the 106,000 Blue Cross Tennessee's individual policy holders can keep their plan, the rest must change over the next year because of the Affordable Care Act's minimum requirements for specific benefits such as childbirth; also, the law ended yearly and lifetime monetary limits on coverage, which were standard in many existing policies.

Blue Cross is not terminating coverage but is suggesting replacement plans to the affected policyholders. The company's vice president, Roy Vaughn, said this week, "Nobody is getting turned away. No one is getting canceled." He also noted that some replacement plans cost more, others less.

Blue Cross in Tennessee potentially can be a resource of information for people caught off-guard by the way the health care law has unfolded. Still, the sting of betrayal by the Obama administration is not lessened. Without a doubt, many otherwise skeptical Americans were won over to the Affordable Care Act by the fateful promises made to them by the president. Now they are being thrust into the Health Insurance Marketplace to join uninsured Americans who already are struggling to get enrolled in a system rife with glitches.

And the enrollment process is expected to be worse in states, including Tennessee, that have not set up their own health insurance exchange. As of Thursday, only 992 Tennesseans had enrolled through the federal exchange. Nationwide, 26,794 people had bought insurance through the federal exchange, compared with 79,391 enrolled through state exchanges - with potentially millions to go.

The clock is ticking on the feds to make things right.

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Obama's broken promise burns the insured

We learned this week that about 66,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee customers will not, in fact, be able to keep their current health insurance, as President Obama had promised.